Computer: Obey

From The Norman [OK] Transcript on October 31, 2008

By Dave Moore

Wouldn't you like to be able to speak to your computer and have it obey your every command? You may recall the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, in which the crew of the Starship Enterprise is transported back to the 20th century. While visiting a scientist's laboratory, Scotty, the ship's chief engineer, takes a computer mouse and begins talking into it as if it were a microphone. When told that he must use the computer's keyboard, he replies, "Keyboard; how quaint."

For most normal computer users, modern technology is still pretty quaint. However, as the science of speech recognition continues to improve, computers are becoming more and more able to obey verbal commands. In fact, while writing this article, I have not been using a keyboard. Instead, I've been speaking into a microphone, and using a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS), which translates my spoken words into text using Microsoft Word.

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